Anne Marchand

For Washington, DC based painter Anne Marchand, Abstraction is her way to explore the very nature of life. She speaks to a clear captivation with the emotional power of color, music, and poetry to engage the senses. Using painting as a platform, she explores universal currents and rhythms with layers of paint, texture, and words on canvas. Meaning takes shape in an environment where she invents forms and shapes to convey energy and movement. Moving with conscious and spontaneous actions, she combines themes of spirit and matter. Her body of work reflects a fascination with inner and outer space and mystic poetry. Her artworks are inspired by images that come from the Hubble and other space probes.

Marchand’s medium of choice is acrylic paint because it can be used to opacity, translucency, and transparency. Using acrylics allows her a process of discovery and unexpected surprises. She builds complex layers of colors, materials, words, and forms. As the process begins, a momentum is built, which for the artist creates a spontaneous dialogue with the work. Collage elements may become part of the work, whether buried inside layers of paint or visible on the surface. Part of her interest in building layers into her paintings through collage is the discovery of how things, seeming totally disparate, come together to create new meaning. The artist looks for things that reference ideas and concepts that she wants to embed in the work. These bits and pieces may come from geometry, writing, astronomy, and politics. In choosing materials, she looks to those that relate to the earth like glass beads or sand. As Anne Marchand herself says, “The painting process is a metaphor for patterns emerging in nature and in the visible universe. I am drawn to images that open the viewer to questions about personal experience, consciousness and transformation.”

Anne Marchand was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and is now based in Washington, DC. Her work is currently on view at Green Chalk Contemporary in California and Porter Contemporary in New York City. Marchand has exhibited in Washington, DC and prestigious galleries in Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, New Mexico, and North Carolina. Her works have been included in national and regional exhibitions at the Washington Project for the Arts, the National Building Museum, the Southeast Federal Center, the Federal Reserve Board, Maryland Art Place, Rawls Museum Arts, the Arlington Arts Center, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and the Palm Springs Art Museum. Her work is also featured in corporate and private collections across the United States. She has received numerous prizes and grants for her work, notably an Artist Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities in 2014 and a residency grant to Culiacan, Mexico from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Her work is featured in 100 Artists of the Mid Atlantic published by Schiffer, Studio Visit Magazine and featured in Artist’s Homes and Studios. Anne Marchand holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Auburn University and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Georgia.

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